The New York Times editorialized today, “It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.” What’s more, the Toledo Blade chastised Romney today for “conducting an exercise in deception about auto-industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign.”

And for its part, the Obama campaign unveiled this new ad this afternoon, noting that Romney’s 11th-hour push is based on a fraudulent foundation.

There’s a larger significance to spots like these. At the surface, Obama uses messages like these to stay on the offensive while keeping one his strongest issues – the rescue of the American auto industry – in the spotlight.

But I also continue to believe the Obama campaign is invested in making “trust” a closing theme of the election, and by getting caught lying so blatantly, Romney is making the president’s job easier.